Oecd Development Centre

• Empowerment of the poor is one ingredient in effective poverty reduction. • A demand-driven participatory approach enhances effectiveness and efficiency. • Accountability is the central lever for participatory governance. • Capacity building is necessary for making participatory governance a reality. In its research activities, the Development Centre aims to identify and analyse problems whose implications will be of concern in the near future to both Member and non-Member countries of the OECD. The conclusions represent a contribution to the search for policies to deal with the issues involved. The Policy Briefs deliver the research findings in a concise and accessible way. This series, with its wide, targeted and rapid distribution, is specifically intended for policy and decision makers in the fields concerned. Conventional poverty reduction strategies have produced disappointing results in many instances, especially in situations of high initial inequality which tend to reflect political obstacles to broad-based development. Participatory Governance draws on insights from political and institutional economics and from experiments promoted by social activists. It represents a paradigm shift which has the potential to overcome political obstacles by building and harnessing the capacities of the poor themselves for the design of more effective policies of poverty reduction and their implementation in more efficient and therefore sustainable ways. Acknowledgements The research which gave rise to this Policy Brief was made possible by a generous financial contribution from the government of the Netherlands.